1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to communication systems, methods and program products. More particularly, the invention relates to low power communication in a mobile environment for fast data downloads—apparatus, systems and methods.
2. Description of Prior Art
Ultra Wideband (UWB) is a wireless technology for transmitting digital data over a wide spectrum of frequency bands with very low power. Data can be transmitted at very high rates and can carry huge amounts of data over a short distance at very low power. Instead of traditional sine waves, UWB broadcasts digital pulses that are timed very precisely on a signal across a wide spectrum at the same time. Transmitter and receivers must be coordinated to send and receive pulses with an accuracy of trillionths of a second. Advantageously, UWB is not subject to multipath by time gating the receiver to allow it to ignore signals arriving outside the gating interval.
When transferring data by UWB, the receiver device might become the bottleneck for data transfer, particularly in hand held communication devices where communication busses are not optimized for very fast data transfer within the device. Moreover, memory speed and capacity of such devices may not be sufficient to handle trains of data pulses at high data rates for large data transfers.
To advance the technology state of handheld held communication devices for ultra fast download using UWB, it would be desirable to equip such devices with a high speed, high capacity portable memory and a UWB transceiver for large data transfers at transmission rates up to 1 Gbits per second. The portable memory may be in the form of a removable memory or memory stick including a memory and UWB transceiver coupled to a terminal, typically a handheld device or laptop. However, current FCC regulations described in FCC, First Report and Order, FCC 02-48, dated Feb. 14, 2002 require that UWB type of radios may only transmit when connected to a receiver to limit interference with other receivers. It would be desirable to have a first low power communication device establish a short-range control link with a second low power communication device for controlling a second, significantly faster, short-range communication link between the devices for UWB transmissions according to FCC requirements.
Prior art related to the subject matter of the application includes:
(1) U.S. Pat. No. 5,687,169 entitled “Full Duplex Ultrawide-Band Communication System And Method”, issued Nov. 11, 1997, discloses an impulse radio transceiver for full duplex ultrawide-band communications. The transceiver comprises an impulse radio transmitter to transmit impulse radio signal pulses, an impulse radio receiver to receive impulse radio signal pulses. Either or both of the impulse radio transmitter and the impulse radio receiver, synchronizes the transmission and the reception of the impulse radio signal pulses for pulse interleaved communications. Pulse interleaving avoids self-interference between the transmitted impulse radio signal pulses and the received impulse radio signal pulses. In addition to pulse interleaved communications, bursts of pulses can be transmitted between two transceivers in an interleaved fashion. Alternatively, two different pulse repetition rates are be used to transmit and receive impulse radio signal pulses simultaneously. Still further, selected pulses of the received or transmitted impulse radio signal pulses are blanked to avoid interference.
(2) U.S. Pat. No. 6,587,949 entitled “Secure Storage Device For Transfer Of Data Via Removable Storage”, issued Jul. 1, 2003, discloses a secure storage device with the identical external dimensions, form factor and hardware connectivity configuration of a standard removable storage device, for securing digital data such as digital images from digital cameras at the acquisition stage. Original digital camera data is saved in the memory of the secure storage device after performing one or more security functions, including encryption, creation of an authentication file, adding data to the image data such as fingerprinting, and adding secure annotations such as separate data included in an image header. These processes are transparent to a host device receiving secure data from the storage device because standard protocol is used to write to the secure storage device. The device prepares original authentication data from original digital camera data, and encrypts and stores both the original authentication data and the original image data. The use of the device includes reading the original image data on a separate computer, by means of direct downloading of the data and or mounting the removable storage device on the computer. The computer is able to read data on the raw transfer level as if the device is a standard unsecured storage device. On the content level, the data remains secure. The computer can be programmed with software whereby the encrypted original authentication data can be decrypted by a user having a password key. Additional software may enable the computer to verify the authentication data of the image data for questionable authenticity. The secure storage device secures data from any computerized device that stores data on a removable storage device, such as a portable computer.
None of the prior art discloses ultra-fast downloading of data to terminals in a mobile environment using a low power communication control link to control a significantly faster UWB data link between the terminals for data transfer to a dedicated memory stick including a high capacity memory and UWB transceiver devices.